Study: Cellphone Radiation Affects Your Brain

A new study says cellphone use affects your brain. Like they needed a
study to discover this? Anyone who's ever driven behind someone using a
cellphone in their car, or watched this viral YouTube video, of the girl who texted her way into a fountain, already knows this
important fact.

What the study does provide is an excuse. An explanation for why otherwise normal individuals become complete idiots when talking on their phones. According to an article in the USA Today, Cellphone Use Affects Brain Activity, scientists used positron emission tomography (I just wanted to use "positron emission tomography" in a sentence) to measure brain glucose metabolism (ditto) to learn that radiation from the phone increases activity in two parts of the brain: the orbitofrontal cortex (ditto again) and the temporal area (not so much).

The temporal area is widely considered to be associated with language and memory. This could explain why some people talk so loudly on their cellphones. The radiation from the antenna is interfering with their ability to remember to use their inside voices!

The orbitofrontal cortex is associated with smell and eating, which could explain why so many people like to use their cellphones in restaurants. The cellphone radiation is triggering their orbitofrontal cortex and therefore, when they feel the need to pull out their phones in order to feel important and/or look cool, they don't realize how much they stink. Emotion and aggression are two other areas the orbitofrontal cortex is believed to control. I think this goes a long way toward explaining all the people who manage to get into arguments with their girlfriends/boyfriends/mothers/brothers, etc., when they happen to be on their cellphones while sitting directly behind me on the CTA.

A neurosurgeon quoted in the article expressed some concern on the affects of this radiation on kids. According to the USA Today, the chairman of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA, Keith Black, says their less developed skulls and brains are more susceptible to it. I think I may trot this argument out the next time my daughter goes over her monthly minutes limit. "It's not about the money, dear. It's about good brain health!"

Unfortunately, all this information about cellphones and radiation is just one more thing for us moms to worry about. I'm afraid if I think about it too much, it'll make my brain's blood glucose over-metabolize. (My joke about positronic emissions wasn't suitable for this publication.) Perhaps one solution would be to simply turn on my cellphone, hold it to my ear and let the radiation zap it from my memory, which is controlled by the orbitofrontal cortex, you know.